Growing up in a small southeastern Missouri town, Jeri Sitzes and her sisters happened to live about a mile from a video store. But it wasn’t just a video store. It included video games as well, perhaps most notably “Street Fighter.”

It was the beginning of Sitzes’ martial arts education that would someday bloom into a wide-ranging career.

“We would kick the guys’ asses every day,” Sitzes told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “Then we would rent movies and take them home to learn whatever we could from them. There was some horrible acting, but the fight scenes were insane.”

It was a start that sent Sitzes onto a martial arts career as varied as the combat movies her family watched. With professional experience in mixed-martial-arts, Muay Thai, boxing and kickboxing – in part brought on by the difficulty for a female fighter to find a regular string of fights – Sitzes is keeping her attention on Muay Thai while she looks for her next opportunities in other combat sports.

A holder of three titles, Sitzes will defend her World Boxing Council Muay Thai championship on Saturday at the world championship Muay Thai series at Star of the Desert Arena in Primm, Nev. The Springfield, Mo., resident will display the skills she began learning on old video tapes and developed when formal tae kwon do classes began when she was 14 years old.

Family responsibilities, including the care of a sick mother who consistency outlived doctors’ predictions, helped keep Sitzes grounded while she endured nearly 60 professional fights in her various fighting methods.

Sitzes hasn’t often faced nerves about being hit, but she instead focused on the preparation for her fights.

“Mentally, I’m ready for it,” she said. “You know you’re gonna get hit, so I prepare myself for that. Then you won’t be surprised when you get popped.”

Family concerns

It’s difficult for Sitzes to answer exactly what afflicted her mother and caused her to need extra care.

“She was a walking medical textbook,” she said. “The main thing was some kind of lung issue, so she had very little lung capacity, and one lung was taken out. But she was tough.”

Sitzes’ mother helped create an overcoming-odds environment in the family’s home in Poplar Bluff, Mo. With three sisters in the house, Sitzes turned to practicing the action she found in the video store rentals to be outside and active, as her mother wished.

At 14, she started tae kwon do, and she was competitive almost immediately. After awhile, she decided she didn’t like the pointing system in many martial arts matches. She knew she could take a hit, and she could handle that concern mentally. So, she was ready to take one.

“I thought I was destined to be a fighter,” she said. “I don’t know what the criteria are, but I think I have it in me.”

To that end, Sitzes found a nearby gym, and she soon found herself in her first professional kickboxing match. Before long, she was also boxing and fighting Muay Thai, and by 2009 she added MMA as her fourth combat sport.

Since beginning her fighting career, Sitzes has compiled records of 14-9 in boxing, 17-2 in the World Combat League (a now-defunct kickboxing promotion), 15-0 in kickboxing, 3-0 in Muay Thai and 3-1 in MMA.

She took inspiration from her mother, who was told in 1987 she had a few years to live. She died in 2007.

“She outlived the doctors by will,” Sitzes said. “I saw that and recognized that any type of training, any type of fighting, it was all about mentality. I feel like I have the mentality, and I try to have the physicality to back it up. That’s how I prepare myself.”

Continuing to fight

In September 2009, Sitzes took part of her third MMA fight, this time on a Strikeforce Challengers card. She took on Lacey Schuckman, and her third-round win by TKO gained plenty of attention for her fighting ability.

After that, following four MMA fights in six months, Sitzes decided she wanted a break. She took a year off from fighting to allow her body to heal and deal with family concerns following her mother’s death.

When she returned, it was to Muay Thai, where she won a WBC belt in August 2010. That’s the title she will defend on Saturday.

Going forward, Sitzes would like to return to MMA, which has its own unique set of concerns for fighters, she said.

“In MMA, I’m worried about a finger to the eye or a broken arm or a pulled tendon, injuries you don’t have to worry about (in other forms of combat),” she said. “But that’s also why I like it, because it’s different and it has different challenges.”

One of the reasons she has fought so many different kinds of fights, she said, is the quicker access to more opportunities. As skilled as she is – with nearly two decades of training, title belts and toughness learned from a mother she said she would have feared as a fighter – Sitzes is like many female fighters in wanting more bouts than she can schedule.

Award-winning newspaper reporter Kyle Nagel is the lead features
writer for MMAjunkie.com. His weekly “Fight Path” column focuses on the
circumstances that led fighters to a profession in MMA. Know a fighter
with an interesting story? Email us at news [at] mmajunkie.com.

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